Bristol

Bristol

Geography
Status	Ceremonial county, City and Unitary district
Region	South West England
Area - Total - District	Ranked 47th 110 km² Ranked 237th
Admin HQ	Bristol
ISO 3166-2	GB-BST
ONS code	00HB
Traditional county	County corporate (Gloucestershire and Somerset)
OS grid reference	ST5946972550
Coordinates	51°27N 2°35W
NUTS 3	UKK11
Demographics
Population - Total (2004 est.) - Density - District	Ranked 43rd 393,900 3,599 / km² Ranked 7th
Ethnicity	91.8% White 2.9% S. Asian 2.3% Afro-Caribbean
Politics
File:Bristolarms.PNG Bristol City Council http://www.bristol-city.gov.uk/
Control	No overall control Lib Dem Minority
Leadership	Leader & Cabinet
Executive	Liberal Democrats
Members of Parliament	Roger Berry Kerry McCarthy Doug Naysmith Dawn Primarolo Stephen Williams

Bristol (IPA: brĭs'təl) is a city, unitary authority and ceremonial county in South West England. It is situated 115 miles (185 km) west of London at 51°27′14″N 2°35′48″W / 51.45389°N 2.59667°W / 51.45389; -2.59667. With a population of 400,000, and metropolitan area of 550,000, Bristol is England's sixth, and the United Kingdom's ninth, most populous city. As such, it is one of England's core cities. It was chartered as a city in 1155 and county in 1373. For half a millennium Bristol was the second or third largest English city, until the rapid rise of Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, in the Industrial Revolution of the 1780s. The city borders on the unitary districts of Bath and North East Somerset, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, and has a short coastline on the Bristol Channel.

Bristol is one of the main centres of culture, employment and education in the region. From its earliest days, its prosperity has been linked to that of the Port of Bristol, the commercial port, which was in the city centre but has now moved to the Bristol Channel coast at Avonmouth and Portbury. In more recent years the economy has been built on the aeronautic industry, and the city centre docks have been regenerated as a centre of heritage and culture. The city is famous for its unique music and film industries, and was a finalist for the 2008 European Capital of Culture.

The town of Brycgstow (Old English, "the place at the bridge") was in existence by the beginning of the 11th century, and under Norman rule acquired one of the strongest castles in southern England. The River Avon in the city centre has slowly evolved into Bristol Harbour, and since the 12th century the harbour has been an important port, handling much of England's trade with Ireland. In 1247 a new bridge was built and the town was extended to incorporate neighbouring suburbs, becoming in 1373 a county in its own right. During this period Bristol also became a centre of shipbuilding and manufacturing. Bristol was the starting point for many important voyages, notably John Cabot's 1497 voyage of exploration to North America.

By the 14th century Bristol was England's third-largest town (after London and York), with perhaps 15-20,000 inhabitants on the eve of the Black Death of 1348-49. The plague inflicted a prolonged pause in the population growth of Bristol, with numbers remaining at 10-12,000 through most of the 15th and 16th centuries. Bristol was made a city in 1542, with the former Abbey of St Augustine becoming Bristol Cathedral. During the 1640s Civil War the city suffered through Royalist military occupation and plague.

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Renewed growth came with the 17th-century rise of England's American colonies and the rapid 18th-century expansion of England's part in the Atlantic trade in Africans taken for slavery in the Americas. Bristol, along with Liverpool, became a significant centre for the slave trade although few slaves were brought to Britain. During the height of the slave trade, from 1700 to 1807, more than 2000 slaving ships were fitted out at Bristol, carrying a (conservatively) estimated half a million people from Africa to the Americas and slavery. Fishermen who left Bristol were long part of the migratory fishery to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and began settling that island permanently in larger numbers around this time. Bristol's strong nautical ties meant that maritime safety was an important issue in the city, In the 19th century Samuel Plimsoll, "the Sailor's friend", campaigned fearlessly to make the seas safer. He was shocked by the scandal of overloaded cargoes and successfully fought for a compulsory loadline on ships.

Competition from Liverpool from c.1760, the disruption of maritime commerce through war with France (1793) and the abolition of the slave trade (1807) contributed to the city's failure to keep pace with the newer manufacturing centres of the North and Midlands. The long passage up the heavily tidal Avon Gorge, which had made the port highly secure during the middle ages, had become a liability which the construction of a new "Floating Harbour" (designed by William Jessop) in 1804–9 failed to overcome. Nevertheless, Bristol's population (66,000 in 1801) quintupled during the 19th Century, supported by new industries and growing commerce. It was particularly associated with the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who designed the Great Western Railway between Bristol and London, two pioneering Bristol-built steamships, and the Clifton Suspension Bridge. John Wesley founded the very first Methodist Chapel in Bristol in 1739.

Bristol's city centre suffered severe damage from bombing during World War II. The original central area, near the bridge and castle, is now a park, featuring two bombed out churches and some tiny fragments of the castle. A third bombed church has a new lease of life as St Nicholas' Church Museum. Like much of British post-war planning, regeneration of Bristol city centre was characterised by large, cheap tower blocks, brutalist architecture and expansion of roads. Since the 1990s this trend has been reversing, with the closure of some main roads, the restoration of the fine Georgean period Queen's Square, the regeneration of the Broadmead shopping centre, and in 2006 two of the city centre's tallest post-war blocks were torn down. The removal of the docks to Avonmouth, seven miles (11 km) downstream from the city centre, relieved congestion in the central zone and allowed substantial redevelopment of the old central dock area (the "Floating Harbour") in recent decades, although at one time the continued existence of the docks was in jeopardy as it was seen merely as derelict industry rather than a potential asset.

In 1974 the local government was again changed, and Bristol became a non-metropolitan district of the newly formed non-metropolitan county of Avon. When that county was abolished on the April 1 1996, Bristol returned to its former status of a city and county in itself, becoming one of the newly created unitary authorities. On March 4, 2005, Bristol was granted Fairtrade City status.^[1]

As well as Bristol's nautical connections, the city's economy is reliant on the aeronautic industry, the media, information technology and financial services sectors and tourism.^[2] In 1998 Bristol's GDP was £6.224 billion GBP, and the combined GDP of South Gloucestershire, North Somerset and B&NES was £6.98 billion. The GDP per head was £15,472, making the city more affluent than the UK as a whole, at 123% of the national average.^[3] In 2000 Bristol's unemployment rate was 5.9%, compared to 4.8% for the south west, 5.8% for England, and 6.0% for the United Kingdom.^[3]

In the 20th century, Bristol's manufacturing activities expanded to include aircraft production at Filton, by the Bristol Aeroplane Company, and aero-engine manufacture by Bristol Aero Engines (later Rolls-Royce) at Patchway. The aeroplane company became famous for the WWI Bristol Fighter, and Second World War Blenheim and Beaufighter aircraft. In the 1950s it became one of the country's major manufacturers of civil aircraft, with the Bristol Freighter and Britannia and the huge Brabazon airliner. The Bristol Aeroplane Company diversified into car manufacturing in the 1940s, building luxury hand-built cars at their factory in Filton, under the name Bristol Cars. The car manufacturer became independent from the Bristol Aeroplane Company in 1960.

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In the 1960s Filton played a key role in the Anglo-French Concorde supersonic airliner project. Concorde components were manufactured in British and French factories and shipped to the two final assembly plants, in Toulouse and Filton. The French manufactured the centre fuselage and centre wing and the British the nose, rear fuselage, fin and wingtips, while the Rolls-Royce/Snecma 593 engine's manufacture was split between Rolls-Royce (Filton) and SNECMA (Paris). The British Concorde prototype made its maiden flight from Filton to RAF Fairford on 9 April 1969, five weeks after the French test flight.

In 2003 the two airlines using Concorde (British Airways and Air France) and the company supplying spares and support (Airbus) made the decision to cease flying the aircraft and to retire them to locations (mostly museums) around the world. On 26 November 2003, Concorde 216 made the final ever Concorde flight, returning to Filton airfield to be kept there permanently as the centrepiece of a projected air museum. This museum will include the existing Bristol Aero Collection, which includes a Bristol Britannia aircraft.

The major aeronautical companies in Bristol now are BAE Systems, Airbus and Rolls-Royce, all based at Filton. Another important aeronautical company in the city is Cameron Balloons, the world's largest manufacturer of hot air balloons. Annually, in August, the city is host to the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, one of Europe's largest hot air balloon events.

The city has two significant football clubs: Bristol City F.C. who play in Football League One and Bristol Rovers F.C. who play in Football League Two. The city is also home to a Rugby Union club known as Bristol Rugby, who have won promotion to the Guinness Premiership, and a first-class cricket side, Gloucestershire C.C.C.

In summer the grounds of Ashton Court to the west of the city play host to the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, a major event for hot-air ballooning in Britain. The Fiesta draws a substantial crowd even for the early morning lift that typically begins at about 6.30 am. Events and a fairground entertain the crowds during the day. A second mass ascent is then made in the early evening, again taking advantage of lower wind speeds. Ashton Court also plays host to the Ashton Court festival each summer, an outdoors music festival which used to be known as the Bristol Community Festival.

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The city's principal theatre company, the Bristol Old Vic, was founded in 1946 as an offshoot of the Old Vic company in London. Its premises on King Street consist of the 1766 Theatre Royal (400 seats), a modern studio theatre called the New Vic (150 seats), and foyer and bar areas in the adjacent Coopers' Hall (built 1743). The Theatre Royal is a grade I listed building and the oldest continuously-operating theatre in England. The Bristol Old Vic also runs a prominent Theatre School. The Bristol Hippodrome is a larger theatre (1981 seats) which hosts national touring productions, while the 2000-seat Colston Hall, named after Edward Colston, is the city's main concert venue. Bristol is home to many live music venues, of which The Old Duke is perhaps the best known.

The music scene is thriving and significant. From the late 1970s onwards it was home to a crop of cultish bands combining punk, funk, dub and political consciousness, the most celebrated being The Pop Group. Ten years later, Bristol was the birthplace of a type of English hip-hop music called trip hop or the Bristol Sound, epitomised in the work of artists such as Tricky, Portishead, Smith & Mighty and Massive Attack. It is also a stronghold of drum n bass with notable bands like the Mercury Prize winning Roni Size/Reprazent and Kosheen as well as the pioneering DJ Krust and More Rockers. This music is part of the wider Bristol Urban Culture scene which received international media attention in the 1990s and still thrives today. Bristol's musical pioneering spirit continues as the home to one of the largest and most diverse DIY music communities in the UK.

The Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery houses a collection of natural history, archaeology, local glassware, Chinese ceramics and art. The Bristol Industrial Museum, on the dockside, shows local industrial heritage and operates a steam railway, boat trips, and working dockside cranes. The City Museum also runs three preserved historic houses: the Tudor Red Lodge, the Georgian House, and Blaise Castle House. The Watershed Media Centre and Arnolfini gallery, both in disused dockside warehouses, exhibit contemporary art, photography and cinema.

Stop frame animation films and commercials painstakingly produced by Aardman Animations and high quality television series focusing on the natural world have also brought fame and artistic credit to the city. The city is home to the BBC's regional headquarters, and the BBC Natural History Unit. Locations in and around Bristol often feature in the BBC's natural history programmes, including the cult children's television programme Animal Magic, filmed at Bristol Zoo. The slang term "Bristols", meaning breasts, was popularised in the Carry On series of films.

In literature Bristol is noted as the birth place of Thomas Chatterton, chief poet of the 18th-century Gothic literary revival, England's youngest writer of mature verse, and precursor of the Romantic movement. The 18th and 19th century portrait painter Sir Thomas Lawrence and 19th century architect Francis Greenway, designer of many of Sydney's first buildings, came from the city, and more recently the infamous graffiti artist Banksy. Many famous comedians are locals, including Justin Lee Collins and Lee Evans. Bristol University has given us the satirist Chris Morris, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost of Spaced and Shaun of the Dead and Matt Lucas and David Walliams of Little Britain fame. Holywood actor Cary Grant was born in the city, Tony Robinson (Blackadder) studied at the Old Vic, and Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith, The Matrix) studied at the City School.

Bristol has one daily morning newspaper, the Western Daily Press, a local evening paper, the Evening Post, a weekly free newspaper, the Bristol Observer and a Bristol edition of free Metro newspaper. The local weekly listings magazine, Venue covers the city's music, theatre and arts scenes. The city has several local radio stations, including BBC Radio Bristol, GWR FM and a university station, The Hub.

A minority of Bristolians speak a distinctive dialect of English (known colloquially as Brizzle or Bristle). Uniquely for an urban area of Britain, this is a rhotic dialect, in which the r in words like car is pronounced. It is perhaps this element of the dialect which has led outsiders to dub it "farmer speech". The most unusual feature of this dialect, unique to Bristol, is the Bristol L (or Terminal L), in which an L sound is appended to words that end in a letter a. Thus "area" becomes "areal", etc. This is how the city's name evolved from Brycgstow to have a final 'L' sound: Bristol. Another Bristolian linguistic feature is the addition of a superfluous "to" in questions relating to direction or orientation. For example, "Where's that?" would be phrased as "Where's that to?", a feature exported to Newfoundland English.

Bristol City Council is elected by thirds and there are two councillors per ward, each serving a four-year term. Wards never have both councillors up at the same time, so effectively two thirds of the wards are up each election.^[4] The Council has long been dominated by the Labour Party, but recently the Liberal Democrat party has grown strong in the city and took minority control of the Council in 2005. The Council Leader is Liberal Democrat Councillor Barbara Janke and the Lord Mayor is Conservative Councillor Peter Abraham.^[5]

Bristol's Westminster constituencies currently cross the borders with neibouring authorities, and the city is divided into Bristol West, East, South and North-west and Kingswood. Northavon also covers some of the suburbs, but none of the administrative county. At the next election the boundaries will be changed to coincide with the county boundary. Kingswood will no longer cover any of the county, and a new Filton and Bradley Stoke constituency will include the suburbs in South Gloucestershire. There are currently four Labour and one Liberal Democrat MPs.^[6]

Bristol has a tradition of local political activism, and has been home to many important political figures. Tony Benn, a veteran left-wing politician, was Member of Parliament for Bristol South during the 1960s. Edmund Burke, MP for the city for six years from 1774, famously insisted that he was a Member of Parliament first, rather than a representative of his constituents' interests. In 1963 Paul Stephenson led a boycott of the city's buses after the Bristol Omnibus Co. refused to employ black drivers and conductors. The boycott is known to have influenced the creation of the UK's first Race Relations Act in 1965.^[7] The women's rights campaigner Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence (1867–1954) was also born in Bristol.

In 2004 the Office for National Statistics estimated the county's population at 393,900, making it the 47th largest ceremonial county in England.^[8] Using Census 2001 data the ONS estimated the contiguous built-up area to be 420,556,^[9] and metropolitan area to be 550,000.^[10] This makes the city England's sixth most populous city, and seventh most populous metropolitan area.^[11] At 3,599 people per square kilometre it has the seventh highest population density of any English district.^[12]

Sixty percent of Bristol's population registered their religion as Christianity, and 25% as not religious in the 2001 census, compared to 72% and 15% nationally. Two percent of the population follow Islam (3% nationally), with no other religion above one percent.^[13]

Bristol is situated in an area of limestone, which forms to the Mendip Hills to the south and the Cotswolds to the north. The rivers Avon and Frome cut through this limestone, creating Bristol's characteristic hilly lansdscape. The city has two gorges, the Avon Gorge and at Blaise Castle, cut from the limestone. Situated in the south of the country, Bristol is one of the warmest^[14] and sunniest^[15] cities in the UK. The city is partially sheltered by Exmoor and the Brecon Beacons, but exposed from the Bristol Channel, and annual rainfall is similar to the national average.^[16]

Bristol is home to two major institutions of higher education: the University of Bristol, a "redbrick" chartered in 1909, and the University of the West of England, formerly Bristol Polytechnic, which gained university status in 1992. The city also has two dedicated further education institutions, City of Bristol College and Filton College as well as a theological college, Trinity College, Bristol. The Create centre is home to many sustainable development projects and life long learning schemes. The city has 129 infant and primary schools,^[17] 17 secondary schools,^[18] and three city learning centres. There are also many independent schools of a high quality in the city, including Queen Elizabeth's Hospital, an all-boys school, the only of its kind in the area and all-girls school Red Maids' School, the oldest girl's school in England (founded in 1634 by John Whitson).

In 2005 the Chancellor of the Exchequer recognised Bristol's strong ties to science and technology by naming Bristol one of three "science cities", and promising funding for further development of science in the city.^[19] As well as research at the two universities and Southmead Hospital, science education is important in the city, with At-Bristol, Bristol Zoo and Bristol Festival of Nature being prominent educational organisations. The city has a history of scientific achievement, including Sir Humphry Davy, the 19th century scientist who worked in Hotwells and discovered laughing gas. Bishopston has given the world two Nobel Prize winning physicists: Paul Dirac for crucial contributions to quantum mechanics in 1933, and Cecil Frank Powell, for a photographic method of studying nuclear processes and associated discoveries in 1950. The city was birth place of Colin Pillinger, planetary scientist behind the Beagle 2 Mars lander project, and is home to Adam Hart-Davis, presenter of various science related television programmes, and the psychologists Susan Blackmore, Richard Gregory, and Derren Brown.

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There are two principal railway stations in Bristol: Bristol Parkway and Bristol Temple Meads, and there are scheduled coach links to most major UK cities. The city is connected by road on an east-west axis from London to Wales by the M4 motorway, and on a north-southwest axis from Birmingham to Exeter by the M5 motorway. The M32 motorway is a spur from the M4 to the city centre. The city is also served by its own airport, Bristol Internation (BRS), at Lulsgate, which has seen substantial improvements to its runway, terminal and other facilities.

Since 2000 the city council has included a light rail system in its local transport plan, but has so far been unable to fund the project. The city was offered European Union funding for the system, but the Department for Transport did not provide the required additional funding.^[20] As a consequence public transport within the city is still largely bus based. The majority of the local bus service is operated by First Group. The central part of the city also has water-based routes, operated as the Bristol Ferry Boat, which provide both leisure and commuter services on the harbour.

Bristol was never well served by suburban railways, though the Severn Beach Line to Avonmouth and Severn Beach survived the Beeching Axe and is still in operation today. The Portishead Railway was closed in the Beeching Axe but was relaid between 2000-2002 as far as the Royal Portbury Dock with a Strategic Rail Authority rail-freight grant. Plans to relay a further three miles of track to Portishead, a largely dormitory town with only one connecting road, have been discussed but there is insufficient funding to rebuild stations.^[21]

Despite being hilly, Bristol is one of the prominent cycling cities of England, and is home to the national cycle campaigning group Sustrans. It has a number of urban cycle routes, as well as links to National Cycle Network routes to Bath and London, to Gloucester and Wales, and to the south-western peninsula of England. Between 1991 and 2001 Bristol had the third highest increase in bicycle use of any UK council area, at 1.64%.^[22]

Bristol was amongst the first cities to adopt the idea of town twinning. In 1947 the city was twinned with Bordeaux and Hanover, the first post-war twinning of British and German cities. Bristol is currently twinned with:^[23]

• - Bordeaux, France, since 1947.
• - Hanover, Germany, since 1947.
• - Oporto, Portugal, since 1984.
• - Tbilisi, Georgia, since 1988.
• - Puerto Morazan, Nicaragua, since 1989.
• - Beira, Mozambique, since 1990.
• - Guangzhou, China, since 2001.

• List of places in Bristol
• List of photographs of Bristol
• W.D. & H.O. Wills
• The Bristol Reservoirs
• Bristol's parks
• Maltese cross (unofficial county flower)

• Visit Bristol — official tourist office site
• Template:Wikitravel
• About Bristol — pictorial tours of Bristol
• Bristol Aero Collection at Kemble airfield
• Photographs of Bristol
• Bristol City Council
• LoveMyTown — City of Bristol
• Dictionary of local dialect words
• Bristol Wards Information; Bristol City Council's official information on the many wards that constitute the city
• Webpage on the Civil War fortifications of Bristol
• Bristol Indymedia - open news publishing project

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